Google Glass: Much ado about nothing

PC Mag’s ranter-in-chief, John C. Dvorak, calls it bluntly a publicity stunt. “It” being the fact that Sergei Brin stated that smartphones are “emasculating”, which taken out of context would point to the fact that smartphones cause a man to lose his genitalia. Actually, one guesses that what he actually wanted to say is smartphones are making people less effective.

Taken in context, it looks like Google’s co-founder, wants to push Google Glass to the best of his abilities. And he probably has a point. Glasses, either from Google or from other vendors, are always on (both electrically and physically). You always wear them and they’re aware of your environment.

To use your phone, you have to take it out of your pocket or pick it up and these few seconds of delay (or in engineering lingo, latency) are, for a company like Google, lost opportunities. These lost seconds are what convinced Google to come up with Google Instant results for example which almost amounts to mind reading.

And this drive for ruthless efficiency is what has motivated Google to come up with so many other time saving services. Google Chrome, Google Car and even Google Fiber. Google Glass, like so many other projects, can either become something fundamental to the core of the company or yet another one of their products lost along the way.

The most important bit though is Google relentless, unquenchable drive to innovation. At the time of writing, Google has acquired more than 120 companies and launched more than 240 projects (services, hardware, software). Out of these, 70, more than a quarter, have been discontinued or have been scheduled to be canned. Google, it seems therefore, has another hidden motto, “there’s nothing as a bad idea, only a good idea whose time has yet to come”.